They are grossly underestimating how many people are going to be hitting the 20's brick wall in combat classes and will be looking for some kind of functional search/seek system to form parties. Incredibly disappointing it's not even alluded to for either update. I would hazard a guess it's probably the number 1 priority on most people's list who are presently beyond 20 and prefer to focus on DoM/DoW. I think this may finally be the thing that does me in. I can not continue to solo 2-3k/hr, duo/trio a hair more, and do a routine a pitiful SP-reward leves for over 2 more months.

They are grossly underestimating how many people are going to be hitting the 20's brick wall in combat classes and will be looking for some kind of functional search/seek system to form parties. Incredibly disappointing it's not even alluded to for either update. I would hazard a guess it's probably the number 1 priority on most people's list who are presently beyond 20 and prefer to focus on DoM/DoW. I think this may finally be the thing that does me in. I can not continue to solo 2-3k/hr, duo/trio a hair more, and do a routine a pitiful SP-reward leves for over 2 more months.

Maybe. But maybe they're just dealing with the complaints in the order they come and according to the magnitude of them. You're one of the few people I've seen mention this, but there are hundreds if not thousands of posts on this forum alone pertaining to the stuff that they have committed to fix. No doubt what you suggest is needed, but one thing at a time.

Yeah I am happy about these announcements but I am going to go insane if we don't get the ability to hire new retainers BEFORE December. I can't stand it.

Fixing party searches would be nice too, but if it doesn't happen I'll just focus on grinding my DoH classes and fishing.

____________________________

lolgaxe wrote:

When it comes to sitting around not doing anything for long periods of time, only being active for short windows, and marginal changes and sidegrades I'd say FFXI players were the perfect choice for politicians.

I just don't get why they won't cave and give us an AH. That was my biggest beef to begin with.

You can put lipstick on a retainer, but it's still a retainer.

With the now assigned wards and the near-future addition of the search function, the retainer system now has the opportunity to be better than an AH. It will allow players to visit favorite retainers and to weed out and avoid RMT. It's shaping up to be a life-like marketplace.

It's a win win for them. The people who currently like the game will like it more, and people who were on the fence will stay. Plus people who might not even play will hear this and think, "Gamespot gave this a 4? This game is way better than that!"

Even though their communication is somewhat different from, say, Blizzard, it is very welcome and hope this is a regular occurrence and not just when S hits the fan.

With more fixes, communication and advertising, SE could regain some momentum and overcome the initial bad press.

With the now assigned wards and the near-future addition of the search function, the retainer system now has the opportunity to be better than an AH. It will allow players to visit favorite retainers and to weed out and avoid RMT. It's shaping up to be a life-like marketplace.

I don't really see how this avoids RMT in any way. However I do agree that the concept COULD be ok if implemented properly.

The only way I could see this affecting RMT would be the fact that people could boycott known RMT retainers, but.... we all know how effective that can be. After all, Walmart is still in business. =P

All of this sounds too good to be true! It will be very interesting to see if they actually deliver. The extra free time is just the sort of gesture you'd expect a company to make in this situation. I'm very impressed.

That's a nice step to the right direction. However, I want to know about what they are doing everyday. Not only once per week, every working day there should be something new about the progress of the game and everything related to this. If SE is not going to give us an official forum, let them give us everyday news!

That's a nice step to the right direction. However, I want to know about what they are doing everyday. Not only once per week, every working day there should be something new about the progress of the game and everything related to this. If SE is not going to give us an official forum, let them give us everyday news!

haha. I think you're asking for a little too much there. =P I think the frequency of updates on lodestone are reasonable. It's more than a lot of companies offer.

And as for the official forum, I think their high level of fan site support is a cool way of doing things. I mean yeah Blizzard has that 'awesome' forum and armory setup where you can look up items and such, but........ everyone just uses Wowhead anyway. =x I think SE's approach this time around is pretty cool, with the fan site kits, the plugs for fan sites on their site, etc.

ALSO, you can tell from these updates that they really are staying true to their word and reading the fan site forums for feedback.

I've been checking everyday for some signs of improvement and then bam, all this at once. I'll give them a tremendous amount of credit for not just listening to the fan base, but coming a long way from the silent, stubborn XI days. I would've been happy with a list of acknowledged improvements necessary, but to get that, an extra trial period, and another message was fantastic. This game has serious potential I just hope they continue to be committed through the life of the game as they seem to be right now.

Literally every single thing they listed in the Ask the Devs article are things that no MMO should ever have been released without.

They really needed massive negative feedback to understand they needed to add these things?

They didn't already know that a map should have its coordinates listed and you should be able to drag your mouse to move the map? Have the devs never seen a map on a PC? They didn't know they need a command to tell you your position? They didn't know players needed seperate chat tabs? They didn't know we would need to be able to map keys as we see fit? They didn't see the need for a way to reply to messages easily?

THEY DIDN'T KNOW WE NEED TO BE ABLE TO SORT INVENTORY? Seriously?

This is a list of changes that should happen between alpha and beta, or in early beta. It is insane that a released game didn't have these simple, basic, fundamental, trivial, expected, required, and obvious features.

If SE made a DVD player, it would have a really nice looking unique case that would require most users to buy a better component stand to hold it. The DVD player would not be able to select scenes or pause the movie. To make it Play or Stop a movie, you would have to navigate 5 levels down a slow menu.

After selling it to you, SE would come out and tell you that in the next 3 months they would add a scene select feature, will work on a pause feature, and try to make it easier to make the movie Play and Stop.

You would all scream in delight that SE is finally adding features to your DVD player that should have been there from the start just like they are in every other DVD player on the market.

Literally every single thing they listed in the Ask the Devs article are things that no MMO should ever have been released without.

They really needed massive negative feedback to understand they needed to add these things?

They didn't already know that a map should have its coordinates listed and you should be able to drag your mouse to move the map? Have the devs never seen a map on a PC? They didn't know they need a command to tell you your position? They didn't know players needed seperate chat tabs? They didn't know we would need to be able to map keys as we see fit? They didn't see the need for a way to reply to messages easily?

THEY DIDN'T KNOW WE NEED TO BE ABLE TO SORT INVENTORY? Seriously?

This is a list of changes that should happen between alpha and beta, or in early beta. It is insane that a released game didn't have these simple, basic, fundamental, trivial, expected, required, and obvious features.

Yes... the game was rushed out.. We already knew that, it's nothing new. Of course they knew most of these things were necessary, they just ran out of time and cut stuff out. Let's just be glad that the voices were heard and the fixes will be implemented, so we can further enjoy the game. No need to further flip out about it, let's just be happy there are improvements.

I myself have been playing since release and will continue playing, as I actually enjoy the game and am patient enough to deal with the broken and/or missing crap.

Literally every single thing they listed in the Ask the Devs article are things that no MMO should ever have been released without.

They really needed massive negative feedback to understand they needed to add these things?

Apparently so.

These are good steps, so I think I will progress to a "cautiously optimistic" state. I really think that their downfall was focusing too much on making it look pretty and thinking the game would sail on that alone. It might work in offline titles, but not in a game that is expected to have a lifespan measures in years. Now they have to go back and work out the details they overlooked.

I'm glad they posted some information on their plans. This will go a long way to give subscribers the warm fuzzies.

Literally every single thing they listed in the Ask the Devs article are things that no MMO should ever have been released without.

They really needed massive negative feedback to understand they needed to add these things?

They didn't already know that a map should have its coordinates listed and you should be able to drag your mouse to move the map? Have the devs never seen a map on a PC? They didn't know they need a command to tell you your position? They didn't know players needed seperate chat tabs? They didn't know we would need to be able to map keys as we see fit? They didn't see the need for a way to reply to messages easily?

THEY DIDN'T KNOW WE NEED TO BE ABLE TO SORT INVENTORY? Seriously?

This is a list of changes that should happen between alpha and beta, or in early beta. It is insane that a released game didn't have these simple, basic, fundamental, trivial, expected, required, and obvious features.

It's obvious the game had a release date set to avoid conflict with other MMO's and to make sure it was out by the holidays. But all the stuff you are griping about will be added soon and will be added before you spend a penny on subscriptions thanks to the extra free month. So just zip it with the 'we are paying to play beta' jargon. By the time your crysta starts being deducted the game will have all the things you expect a premium pay MMO to have.

If you didn't get your ******** out of your system over the last three weeks that ship has sailed. Time to find something else in life to be miserable about because this game is getting awesome.

I have to wonder why it actually took SE this long to finally begin some serious damage control. It's a welcomed change at least and as long as they follow through with these promises I think I'll be happy enough to stay around.

Literally every single thing they listed in the Ask the Devs article are things that no MMO should ever have been released without.

They really needed massive negative feedback to understand they needed to add these things?

They didn't already know that a map should have its coordinates listed and you should be able to drag your mouse to move the map? Have the devs never seen a map on a PC? They didn't know they need a command to tell you your position? They didn't know players needed seperate chat tabs? They didn't know we would need to be able to map keys as we see fit? They didn't see the need for a way to reply to messages easily?

THEY DIDN'T KNOW WE NEED TO BE ABLE TO SORT INVENTORY? Seriously?

This is a list of changes that should happen between alpha and beta, or in early beta. It is insane that a released game didn't have these simple, basic, fundamental, trivial, expected, required, and obvious features.

If you're still not happy with the way Square's fixing things, then why the **** are you still around? You sound like a broken record.

I'm pretty impressed they managed to cover almost every complaint in there. The notable exception being some kind of player search feature so we can see where other people are and form parties more easily. They even mentioned some smaller things I didn't expect to get addressed for a while, like dots for party members on the map and the switching to one-byte characters upon starting with a /.

And on top of it all we get a free month so we don't feel so cheated by paying to play a beta. Now it's a little closer to paying to keep beta characters.

I'm pretty impressed they managed to cover almost every complaint in there. The notable exception being some kind of player search feature so we can see where other people are and form parties more easily. They even mentioned some smaller things I didn't expect to get addressed for a while, like dots for party members on the map and the switching to one-byte characters upon starting with a /.

And on top of it all we get a free month so we don't feel so cheated by paying to play a beta. Now it's a little closer to paying to keep beta characters.

I agree... Only thing I would have liked to have seen mention of is party search and mail service, although mail could be intentional to avoid RMT but still...

Some people have mentioned Ishgard, Chocobos, and Airships not mentioned, but I don't think these were left out due to time constraints like the other stuff; I think this was intentional. In the interviews they have been pretty secretive about their plans for those things, so I think they probably have a plan for when and how they'll be introduced, but don't want to announce them yet.

Of all the changes (pending or not), I am most appreciative of the extra free month that SE is willing to give to its customers. It's not really about the money saved, but to me its SE's way of saying "we ****** up by releasing this game too early and we're sorry". For a big corporation to willingly slash pure unadulterated revenue is as close of a formal apology as we'll probably ever get.

I've always loved SE as a company and it's been kinda disappointing the last few weeks seeing such negative press for FFXIV and having the game fall so short of expectations, so its nice to see some sincerity and modesty from SE. Let's hope they don't just give us false promises and give us the great game they promised us from the start with all these changes.

It's hard to believe that people are complaining about being given a free month of play.

At 100,000+ subscriptions that's a minimum of 1 million dollars. And that's conservative. When someone gives away more than a million dollars and you complain about it then you are a sad, sad monkey. I cry for you.

I teach my kids that when someone gives you something you say, "Thank you."

It's hard to believe that people are complaining about being given a free month of play.

At 100,000+ subscriptions that's a minimum of 1 million dollars. And that's conservative. When someone gives away more than a million dollars and you complain about it then you are a sad, sad monkey. I cry for you.

I teach my kids that when someone gives you something you say, "Thank you."

Come on sad monkeys, what do you say?

You're just looking at it from the standpoint that SE is some great noble company that feels for it's customer, and out of pure goodness is "giving away" free time with their product.

They are "giving away" free time because they think if they don't they will LOSE money due to people leaving after the first 30 days is up. It's profit driven.

That said, I'm cool with some free time to see what they fix. Not complaining.

Of all the changes (pending or not), I am most appreciative of the extra free month that SE is willing to give to its customers. It's not really about the money saved, but to me its SE's way of saying "we @#%^ed up by releasing this game too early and we're sorry". For a big corporation to willingly slash pure unadulterated revenue is as close of a formal apology as we'll probably ever get.

I've always loved SE as a company and it's been kinda disappointing the last few weeks seeing such negative press for FFXIV and having the game fall so short of expectations, so its nice to see some sincerity and modesty from SE. Let's hope they don't just give us false promises and give us the great game they promised us from the start with all these changes.

^this expresses how I feel quite well. I was ready to give up and come back in another three or four months, but if they follow through on their promises... yay!!

A. It already does this, they are just saying they are going to make it do it in more places. B. Every seamless game works this way. Do you think WoW's entire world other than instances is on one server? It just loads as you move around instead of on a loading screen.

This is the best news I've heard in awhile. Many of the forum regulars probably recognize me as someone who has supported this game for awhile on an "overly optimistic fanboy" level, but I was honestly starting to greatly lose faith in SE. All of the tiny updates and small comments were leaving me wondering if they could do more in a short period of time, this shows me that in two months they can at least have the game mostly to where we wanted it to be at release. This is a great thing considering that another month is going to be free so we won't have to pay for half of their fixing time. It also gives me hope that in the future when it comes time for content additions they will be able to handle it in a good fashion and listen to the playerbase about what should be done with it after it comes out. =D

Pleasantly surprised by this. Seems SE is in fact listening after all. Given their track record, I'll wait until all this stuff happens. If it does, I may very well reconsider my choice not to play this game.

On my way to work this morning I was reminiscing about the early days from XI. I remember I was just below lvl 10 on my first job when I came across LL for the first time. I had no idea what a NM was at this time, so I just engaged. Obviously, I was whooped rather quickly, but it was fun and is a fond memory I have about XI. I was looking forward to seeking out NM's in XIV, and then over the summer I read that they would be from leve's only. This was really disappointing for me. When I read this, "Another significant addition planned for the December version update is the introduction of notorious monsters (NMs), which will appear in open areas", I **** near fell out of my chair.

So let me get this straight... You can go in, enter in the name of the thing you want (enter in the name right? Not already have one in your inventory to search for?) and it will look through all the retainers, gather a list of the ones selling the items, but INSTEAD OF giving you that list with prices for you to purchase off of, they instead do not give you the list but go back and put a dot on the names of the retainers who have the item and then you have to go search every retainer with the dot for prices?

So let me get this straight... You can go in, enter in the name of the thing you want (enter in the name right? Not already have one in your inventory to search for?) and it will look through all the retainers, gather a list of the ones selling the items, but INSTEAD OF giving you that list with prices for you to purchase off of, they instead do not give you the list but go back and put a dot on the names of the retainers who have the item and then you have to go search every retainer with the dot for prices?

Not sure, we won't really know til it's implemented. My interpretation of it, though, was that it'd also show prices in the search. If that was the case it'd pretty much be identical to having an AH anyway, and would add extremely minimal effort to buying an item with that system, versus having an actual AH. But you could be right I dunno

Well it's fantastic to see that SE is communicating and has some great adjustments planned. It seems like this game would have been ready for release around Christmas. I think it's fair that they are giving an additional free 30 days. A few things that still concern me, is that 1) they haven't addressed the repairs system and 2) haven't spoken about the diversifying of the zones. These are still two big issues for me. The first is one of simple playability and the second of game environment. The game still lacks that magical XI feeling. In any event, it's great to see SE communicating and listening to feedback. I will probably grab the CE of the shelf around Christmas and activate.

Something I haven't seen mentioned yet is the huge change that seems to have been overlooked since it wasn't in plain english.

Square Enix wrote:

For players typing multi-byte characters, starting a new message with "/" will automatically switch the typeset to single byte

It's not explicitly said, but what I think they are saying here is that the limit on the number of characters you could type in chat was memory limited, not character limited, meaning if you were using a multi-byte character type, it will double the number of characters you can type per line. They don't come out and say it, so unfortunately it's not a sure thing, but that's the only reason I can think of for switching to a single-byte encoding.

Something I haven't seen mentioned yet is the huge change that seems to have been overlooked since it wasn't in plain english.

Square Enix wrote:

For players typing multi-byte characters, starting a new message with "/" will automatically switch the typeset to single byte

It's not explicitly said, but what I think they are saying here is that the limit on the number of characters you could type in chat was memory limited, not character limited, meaning if you were using a multi-byte character type, it will double the number of characters you can type per line. They don't come out and say it, so unfortunately it's not a sure thing, but that's the only reason I can think of for switching to a single-byte encoding.

I mentioned it already, and that's not what it means at all.

Standard roman characters (and punctuation and such) are represented by a single byte. For languages that use different characters, such as Japanese, multiple bytes are necessary to call up a single character.

What this means is that if your input mode is set to Japanese characters (or whatever other multi-byte character set), when you start typing by hitting the / key first you will automatically be converted to single-byte (standard roman) characters. So basically you can properly use /-commands without having to switch to another input mode first.

Something I haven't seen mentioned yet is the huge change that seems to have been overlooked since it wasn't in plain english.

Square Enix wrote:

For players typing multi-byte characters, starting a new message with "/" will automatically switch the typeset to single byte

It's not explicitly said, but what I think they are saying here is that the limit on the number of characters you could type in chat was memory limited, not character limited, meaning if you were using a multi-byte character type, it will double the number of characters you can type per line. They don't come out and say it, so unfortunately it's not a sure thing, but that's the only reason I can think of for switching to a single-byte encoding.

I mentioned it already, and that's not what it means at all.

Standard roman characters (and punctuation and such) are represented by a single byte. For languages that use different characters, such as Japanese, multiple bytes are necessary to call up a single character.

What this means is that if your input mode is set to Japanese characters (or whatever other multi-byte character set), when you start typing by hitting the / key first you will automatically be converted to single-byte (standard roman) characters. So basically you can properly use /-commands without having to switch to another input mode first.

Ah, thank you, I had not thought of that, but it makes more sense. In my defense, I do know that the Japanese character set uses multi-byte encoding, and Square Enix does not have a history of logical code, so it was not totally unreasonable to think that they might have limited chat lines by string size to reduce the number of packets being transferred. Also, down converting from UTF-16 to UTF-8 would reduce the overhead, allowing for longer strings in the same amount of packets.